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8 Exercise Red Flag After 30-odd years, SGT Murray Staff meets his old friend “Dog”, an A-4 Skyhawk he used to work on, at Nellis Air Force Base. Photo: CPL Brenton Kwaterski February 23, 2017 AIR RCEF Friends reunited Eamon Hamilton A CHANCE reunion between man and machine took place at Red Flag. Imagery Specialist SGT Murray Staff was deployed to Nellis Air Force Base for the exercise and he was surprised to see a familiar-looking A-4 Skyhawk on the flightline. Turns out, it was the same Skyhawk that SGT Staff worked on prior to the jet being retired by the Navy in 1984. “It’s a bit moving to see the old girl again,” SGT Staff said. The jet, which is operated by Draken International, had started its life with the Navy in 1967. Half a century after its first flight, the Skyhawk is still going strong, as it was contracted to provide the USAF and coalition partners with adversarial support. During Red Flag, the jet faced off against a mix of fourth and fifth generation fighters over the Nevada Desert – a world away from when it was launched by the RAN from the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne. SGT Staff joined the RAN in 1977 as an armourer, a similar trade to the RAAF’s own Weapons Ordnance Technician, and spent much of his time working on the Navy’s Skyhawks. The diminutive Skyhawk was renowned for its small size yet big punch, loaded by armourers with up to four tonnes of bombs, guided missiles, and even an air-to-air refuelling pod. “I spent a year in 1980 working on them on board HMAS Melbourne,” SGT Staff said. In 1983, the government announced HMAS Melbourne would be retired without replacement, and the Skyhawk fleet was drawn down at their land base in Nowra over the following year. “In 12 months, we only had four aircraft left, and each aircraft was allocated to one of the trades who worked on them,” SGT Staff said. “It was sunset days for the jet with the Navy, which gave us an opportunity to take care of the aircraft.” SGT Staff and his fellow armourers were allocated aircraft N13-154905, which carried the nose serial “884”. The armourers duly nicknamed it “Dog” after the beloved main character in the Footrot Flats comic strip, even painting the cartoon Border Collie on the aircraft. While this Skyhawk first flew in 1967, it’s showing no signs of slowing down after half a century. “Seeing ‘Dog’ over here at Nellis brought back many great memories of those times in the ’80s,” SGT Staff said. “Hopefully this grand lady still has plenty of life left in her.” The Navy’s Skyhawks were sold to the Royal New Zealand Air Force, “884” took on a new life as NZ6213. RNZAF retired its Skyhawks – including NZ6213 – in 2001. In 2013, NZ6213 was purchased by Draken and brought to the US, becoming N143EM. Meanwhile, SGT Staff was offered three career paths. He chose photography with Navy, and then moved to the Air Force in 1987. An enduring mission T Historian tells Eamon Hamilton how Red Flag has forged air power throughout the world since 1975 how HE CREATION of Exercise Red Flag evolved western Air Forces employ air power, according to Professor Brian Laslie, a historian with the United States Air Force (USAF) Academy. The exercise was borne out of the Vietnam War, which illustrated the USAF’s ill-preparedness to fight a sustained, conventional conflict in the midst of the Cold War. Prof Laslie – who is also Deputy Command Historian at the North American Aerospace Defense Command and US Nor thern Command – said the early 1960s USAF had largely trained for a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union. His book, The Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Training After Vietnam (pictured), details the conditions that led to Red Flag’s creation, and its impact on subsequent conflicts. “I think the biggest post-Vietnam difference in the USAF – and with many other nation’s air forces – is not technological, but in the realm of training, which is now continual and done in a manner that closely approximates actual combat,” Prof Laslie said. “The great thing about Red Flag and so many other exercises around the globe is that they have the ability to evolve, to focus on different geographies and to focus on different styles of warfare.” Air combat missions by the USAF during the Vietnam War were largely executed by aircrew trained under Tactical Air Command (TAC) or the Pacific Air Force (PACAF). A handful of RAAF aircrew con- ducted exchange postings with TAC squadrons, while No. 2 Squadron Canberra bombers were deployed under PACAF’s 35th Tactical Fighter Wing. TAC’s training in the delivery of nuclear weapons provided little value when it faced North Vietnam’s Integrated Air Defence System (IADS), a network of radars, control headquarters, MiG fighters and surface-to-air missiles. As losses mounted, policy dictated that no pilot could do two tours of Vietnam until every pilot had done one, leading to further experience shortfalls. “The training pipeline to get pilots into Vietnam was condensed to just a few weeks. Certain skills, including training to engage and destroy dissimilar aircraft, was not prioritised,” he said. Some, like COL Robin Olds, ered that basic fighter skills had atrophied, and that training prior to deployment was lacking to nonexistent,” he said. “Many times pilots never saw the enemy before being engaged. Perhaps most importantly, the reports discovered that a pilot’s chances for survival increased exponentially after the first 10 combat missions.” MAJ Richard “Moody” Suter, a fighter pilot with TAC, struck upon the idea of recreating those combat missions within a training environment – an idea quickly endorsed by senior officers. tried to remediate the training shortfall during the war. He flew his squadron of F-4E Phantom jets in dogfight training against the RAAF’s own Sabre fighters, flown by No. 79 Squadron in Thailand. The experience was invaluable in preparing USAF crews to face the smaller and more manoeuvrable Soviet MiGs flown by North Vietnam. assessments One of the USAF’s post-war included the Red Baron reports, analysing every single air combat engagement by the USAF and US Navy against North Vietnamese MiGs. “The Red Baron reports discov“When MAJ Suter briefed a gen- eral officer at TAC Headquarters at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, he was told, “you’re in the right church, but the wrong pew,” Prof Laslie said. “(The General Officer) arranged the meeting between Suter and the TAC commander at the time, GEN Robert Dixon.” Red Flag debuted at Nellis Air Force Base in November 1975, involving aircraft and crews similar to those used in Vietnam, flying against a recreated IADS and American jets flying as “Aggressors”. Britain was the first foreign nation to participate in 1977, and Australia the first non-NATO participant in 1980. “Our ability to train with trusted partners in realistic scenarios is invaluable,” he said. As individual USAF personnel grew in experience and confidence, Red Flag exercises began to shape how the USAF approached a conventional air campaign. The coordinated destruction of IADS became a priority, after which friendly aircraft could move through a battlespace with relative impunity. Red Flag’s impact on individuals and the USAF was evident during Operation El Dorado Canyon against Libya in 1986, and Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991. While new technology such as stealth aircraft and precision-guided munitions were critical, they merely provided a new means to conduct air campaigns successfully. “These were successfully exploited because many, if not most, of the hundreds of American and coalition aircrews (in Desert Storm) had attended Red Flags or similar exercises,” Prof Laslie said. After 42 years, Red Flag still delivers participants with experience of the threats they’ll face in a modern air campaign. “Red Flag is a living exercise, and its focus has changed over time, but with its original mission intact.”